1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a composite right/left-handed line device.
2. Related Art
Normally, a line propagating a magnetic wave serves as an equivalent circuit in which series inductance (L) components and parallel capacitance (C) components with respect to the line are connected continuously. This equivalent circuit is referred to as a “right-handed” (RH) system because the electric field, the magnetic field and the wave vector of the equivalent circuit follow the Fleming's right-hand rule. On the contrary, a circuit formed by reversing the L and C components artificially, that is, an equivalent circuit in which series capacitance components and parallel inductance components with respect to the line are connected continuously is referred to as “left-handed” (LH) system because the electric field, the magnetic field and the wave vector of the equivalent circuit follow the Fleming's left-hand rule. The left-handed system can obtain reverse frequency characteristic to that of the right-handed system. Therefore, the left-handed system has started to be applied, for example, to a miniature antenna, an antenna matching circuit, etc.
Media negative in both dielectric constant ∈ and magnetic permeability μ are also referred to as “metamaterials” or “left-handed media”. These media exhibit unique properties such as backward wave (wave whose energy propagation velocity (group velocity) and phase velocity have opposite signs) characteristic, lens effect, etc. Therefore, various applications of these media have been proposed recently as propagation and scattering properties of the media are found out.